


White Hallways

by CloudDreamer



Series: Portraits of Monsters [2]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Cauldron, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:54:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: In which a photographer considers that people live in a society.
Series: Portraits of Monsters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583266
Kudos: 8





	White Hallways

There are monsters in this world, the photographer knows. She knows because she stands on their periphery. She leaves the tracks of her boots on the edges of their crime scenes, bringing blood with her where she goes.

She knows monsters viscerally. In the gut of her stomach that refuses to be still. In the stains on her clothes that she can’t wash out. In the lines of stress on the faces she captures.

There’s an old adage about those who fight monsters, and the photographer thinks about it now, as she steps through a gateway. Cliche, maybe. She’s no expert on the real heroes. Barely ever sees them in anything other than pieces. A finger here, a leg there. 

The people in front of her are a special kind of monster. A special kind of hero. They’re the subtle ones, the ones who shape systems instead of lives. Removing gears that don’t fit the world they want to make. Silencing with a sharp blade, a threat, or a favor with the same sort of ease. Once upon a time, the choices were hard. Now, those choices are mundane.

Those systems are a soft push here, a soft push there, until the people beneath it lie crushed, mangled. Until they snap, and break, bones shattered, patterns of lace in the marrow exposed and bleeding. Rotten gangrene. Vomit on the ground, spilled guts. Self inflicted hurt or put onto others, and it’s the only way they know how to live, after being broken.

They’re haunted by the surface level pain they’ve inflicted, those of them that can still feel. All the lives visibly taken apart, rearranged into bodies as monstrous as their minds are.

It’s tragic, and it’s beautiful.

There’s a ghost in these halls that the photographer can’t capture. She resists definition, and she takes these strange creatures to pieces when they step out of line. She is violence, and she is absence.

There’s a hand on her shoulder, sturdy. Contessa follows a path defined for her by her power, and that power declines to give her the consequences of building a culture controlled by fear. Fear of her and her counterpart. Is it worth it?

Is it worth it? 

She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care to know. All the Thinker powers at her disposal, and she doesn’t use a single one to judge. The photographer walks in the shadow of monsters, and those who travel her path cannot falter for a moment or they will be seen, consumed by the company they keep.

She does not falter. It is in darkness that the photographer was born, her stolen light replaced with a fascination for the grotesque.


End file.
